About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

40 Comp. Lab. L. & Pol'y J. 151 (2018-2019)
Basic Income: Introduction

handle is hein.journals/cllpj40 and id is 175 raw text is: BASIC INCOME More than a half century ago, the Congressionally mandated National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress, noting the ideas of Milton Friedman, Robert Lampman, and James Tobin, among others, called for a minimum income allowance, a negative income tax.' Such a program, it opined, if found feasible, should be designed to approach by stages the goal of eliminating the need for means test public assistance programs by providing a floor of adequate minimum income not connected in principle to labor market participation.2 The idea has received fresh life today in the wake of the increasing precarity of work, captured by Guy Standing in his The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011), a phrase that has come into common usage, and the threat of structural employment driven by technology, by robotization, and artificial intelligence. The idea has gained considerable public awareness: by popularization, in the United States, for example, of Andrew Stein's Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream (2016), and in political activism. A referendum was held in Switzerland in 2016 in which the proposal-of 2,500 Swiss francs per month for every adult-received almost a quarter of the vote.3 An experiment was run in Finland a preliminary assessment of which was published in February, 2019, and which will no doubt prove instructive.4 The idea has also generated two scholarly studies: Philippe van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy (2017) and Guy Standing, Basic Income: And How We Can Make it Happen (2017). Given the traction the idea has gained, and the serious thought devoted to it, the Journal thought it both timely and important to cast wide for comment on these works. We were successful in enlisting Robert van der Veen and Loek Groot from the Netherlands, Brishen Rogers from the United States, and Jos6 Noguera from Spain to take it on for us. Unfortunately, in 1. Technology and the American Economy, Report of the National Commission on Technology, Automation, and Economic Progress 40 (1966). 2. Nevertheless, the Commission's proposal would have excluded those whose incomes were above the mandated floor. 3. Raphael Minder, Guaranteed Income for All? Switzerland's Voters Say No, N.Y. Times, June 5, 2016. 4. Free Money Leaves You Happy and Jobless, Finland Finds, Bloomberg Law News (Feb. 8, 2019).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most